My wife and I visited for a one-night mid-week getaway and wish we could have stayed for (much) longer! Neither of us can remember ever having enjoyed a hotel stay so much.

The Falcon is one of those rare finds - a perfect hotel that ticks all the boxes. It has been stunningly refurbished throughout, and each room you enter combines elegance, character and comfort. Our room (including its beautiful bathroom) was lavishly appointed and was a delight in every respect. The hotel has a first-class restaurant, which serves food that manages to be exciting and contemporary at the same time as deliciously satisfying. We were full of admiration for the head chef and his team, and we were looked after brilliantly by everyone we met. There is also a bar that offers lighter, but still wonderfully tasty, options if a quicker lunch or dinner is what you are after. Because the weather was warm, we ate outside on a terrace overlooking the most tranquil and peaceful of gardens - a perfect summer experience. And we loved our strolls along the lavender-lined paths and on the beautifully manicured lawns.

The Falcon is, in short, a truly special and lovely place, made by a team of brilliant people who could not be nicer or better at what they do. They deserve every accolade and huge success. Needless to say, we will return very shortly!

I never knew The Falcon when it was just the village pub. I’m sure there will be people who lament its passing and its 2020 ‘reimagination’ as The Falcon Hotel. You can’t really just roll up here for a pint and there are a few cruel reviews on TripAdvisor’s chaotic listings from people who did just that and were turned away because they didn’t have a booking. In Covid times this is possibly to be expected.

You see, The Falcon is not a pub even though, from the street, it may vaguely look like one. It’s a proper hotel, done up with impeccable taste and style. Some places that get this sort of treatment go too quickly down the style slalom, overdo just about everything and crash painfully. The Falcon is restrained and sophisticated. The public areas are just gorgeous to behold, with warm colours, Scandi-looking furniture, some retro touches, pleasing art on the walls, windows and doors allowing lots of light to enter. The Eyas Restaurant is spectacularly beautiful. And there are plenty of outside spaces and well-tended gardens. Everywhere you look, the Falcon exudes class. It must have cost a fortune to create it.

We stayed in Room 5 which is above the main lounge. This is reputedly the best room in the house and cost £435 per night, B&B. That’s quite a lot for a hotel, let alone a ‘reimagined’ village pub, without any kind of facilities such as a pool or a spa. Nevertheless, for this money you do get a decent room with the same sophistication in decor and furniture as downstairs, a gorgeous bathroom, luxurious lotions and potions as well as a balcony overlooking the gardens. We could have stayed there much longer. We liked the room’s utter practicality - everything worked, no hi-tech got in the way, the lighting was excellent etc. The ergonomics had been thoroughly thought through. We didn’t check the wifi but I’m confident it would have been superfast.

A place like this needs to become a ‘destination hotel’ and that means having a destination restaurant. The chef here, currently, is Russell Bateman who has a seriously impressive CV, having worked for Marcus Wareing and many other culinary big-hitters and was Michelin-starred at Petrus. For The Falcon he must have been quite a catch. At the moment Bateman eschews the trend for multi-course tasting menus and as someone who dislikes that format and will travel miles to avoid it, I loved his simple three-course menu with four choices at each stage. This was proper, serious food with deep classical roots as well as modernity. It was also paced perfectly, served by a young and enthusiastic team. If I thought our room was slightly over-priced, I thought the food here could have been more expensive than the £60 per person, plus some realistically priced wines. The next day, by the way, got off to a fabulous start with perhaps the best hotel breakfast I have eaten in years, cooked personally by Mr Bateman himself.

To summarise then, I found the whole Falcon operation seamless, from an initial telephone enquiry, to our booking, the effortless check-in process, the evening turn-down service, to check-out. The young, presumably locally sourced staff were charming and professional. This was a class act in every respect. Bravo!

Everything looks perfect. We did not have a booking so were allowed - as "walk ins" - to eat in the East Wing.
Fish finger sandwich was lovely. Coffees were lukewarm, and lemon drizzle cake was dry. The bill for two was £75 (including a recommended gratuity of £8 or so).
The general impression was that the food is over-priced, but then it does market itself as a high end joint, so what did I expect? Probably too much for not enough!!